The People: A Serious Role-playing Game Designed to Address a Humanitarian Crisis

The People is a case study of a serious role-playing board game developed by Weronika Szatkowska with researchers and NGOs, including Badacze i Badaczki na Granicy, Wolno Nam, and Grupa Granica, in response to the 2021 migration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. The game places participants in the roles of residents of the State of Emergency Zone, some of whom are sympathetic to refugees and others who seek to block their passage, combining card drafting, simultaneous action selection, and narrative storytelling. Its stated purpose is to build awareness of the situation's social, legal, and ethical complexity and to stimulate active searches for solutions, with the game and debriefing requiring roughly 120 minutes for groups of four to twelve players.

The article grounds the design in research on serious games, arguing that role-play can foster empathy, experiential learning, and identity exploration, and that the debriefing phase is critical for processing emotions. It positions the game's distinct contribution as examining the refugee problem through the lens of the affected borderland community rather than solely the perspective of asylum seekers, as in earlier titles such as Bury Me My Love and The Migrant Trail. The background section outlines the crisis, including the State of Emergency Zone covering 183 villages, restricted access for aid workers and media, and reported pushbacks and deaths.

Findings are presented largely as qualitative observations from design and playtesting rather than measured outcomes. The paper reports that exposure to conflicting goals produces varied participant strategies, such as passive agreement, rationalization, and disagreement, and that debriefing generates proposed interventions ranging from forest shelters and first-aid training to improved access for doctors, media, and humanitarian organizations. The author states that quantitative and qualitative studies of changes in awareness, activist attitudes, and long-term impact are planned but not yet reported.